On 14.07.2011 01:27, Salmon Egg wrote:> I already know the answer.>> If I get to an expression>> z := x*exp(-(1/2)*x)/(2*sinh((1/2)*x))*((exp(x)-1)/x)>> How do I get Maple to spit out 1? simplify does not do it.>> I looked at the help for simplify, and looked up convert and then See> Also. That looked promising, so I went to help on Convert. Convert had a> bus load of optional arguments. exp looked promising and worked, much to> my pleasant surprise.>> If I were even less knowledgeable than I am, how could I go about> finding a correct approach? Is it merely an empirical search? Is there a> guidebook? Suppose I had a much more complicated expression, say with> radicals and Bessel functions. Us there a cookbook approach to> simplification?

For guessing I often just plot as a first step ...

Difficult to say, though I would expect that Maple would tryto convert hyperbolics to exp, as we would do, since otherexp terms are present.

The simplification problem is not specific for Maple, but itis a problem in any symbolic software system (thus I includedsci.math.symbolic)